California Air Compressor 4610A

As a consumer you have lots of choices when buying an air compressor. One thing is for sure there are no shortages of manufacturers around that make air compressors. Besides all of your major tool brands having their line of compressors, you also get a lot of no names that are in the market or entering the market. As with pressure washers, you have to be careful about what compressor you buy. Now we are not saying that California Air Tools is a no name compressor, but just one you might not be familiar with. One reason is they use to be called GMC compressors.

Manufacturer – California Air Tools

Model – 4610A

Average Purchase Price – $285

If you ask anyone what stands out most about your air compressor, they may give you answers like, it is heavy, I love it or it works great. If you ask them when you are standing right next to them and the compressor is on, they will probably say huh or what did you say? One thing we can probably all agree on is that compressors are loud. Which is not so bad if you are outside, but once you move inside a room, then that is when you really notice the noise.

You have two options to combat the noise level. You can leave the compressor outside and run hoses, which is not always practical or you can just deal with it. Well sometimes dealing with it is not always the best case. I am not going to mention what loud noises do to your ears over time, okay I guess I did, but there are times you need the compressor to be quiet because of your job. As Dan always says, you might want to be quiet if you are in someones house at night working and they are sleeping. Not sure where he gets this stuff, but it does make me laugh. Not sure what type of work he does at night in a residential setting, but that’s between him and the client. He is partially right. If you are doing residential work, I am sure the customer would appreciate not hearing the compressor running all day. What if you are finishing trim in a building and you’re in a hallway. Do you think everyone wants to hear the compressor? I am sure you have come across situations where you would want a quiet compressor. Well that is where the California 4610A is awesome. This compressor is extremely quiet. When I say quiet, I mean you can be right next to it and have a conversation without raising your voice. We didn’t do a great job of showing that in our video because it sounds a lot louder on the video than it really is. We did include a video below that shows how quiet this compressor really is. When we first heard about this compressor and how quiet it was, we really didn’t believe it. In fact we just thought this was a gimmick. After working with the compressor and running it, we were sold that this is truly a quiet compressor. In fact it only puts out 60 decibels.

The model number of this compressor is 4610A. This is a 1 HP and 4.6 gallon twin tank. They also make a 4610. The only difference between the two is the 4610A has the aluminum tanks while the 4610 uses steel tanks. They both have pros and cons. The steel tanks are nice because they are stronger and will take more abuse. However they are heavier and will rust. On the other hand, the aluminum tanks are lighter and this unit only weights 44 lbs., plus it will not rust. The unit is an electric and oil free pump which means you can even use this on uneven ground and not worry about smoking the motor. California Air Tools did a couple things to make this a very effective compressor and reduce vibrations. First, the whole unit sits on some nice soft rubber pads which helps reduce vibration noise and protects the surface. Also there are pads between the motor and the frame to help reduce vibration. The unit puts out a low 1680 rpm to also help reduce vibrations. In regards to durable and longevity, California Air Tools took the route of using a dual piston pump for increased compression which gives it a long life of over 3000 hours. The unit only draws 7.6 amps which is less heat and we all know how heat is a killer.

Overall this is a great compressor and we still can not believe how quiet it is. The time to refill the tank from 0 psi is 125 seconds which is very quick. The gauges are very easy to see and read. The one thing we would like to see changed in future models is the two quick connectors. Not that they are bad, they work and do what they are supposed to do, but we have seen some beefier and better ones on other compressors we have tested. The true standout to this model is how quiet the unit runs. If you are looking for a nice trim nailer compressor, that you will be using indoors or just don’t want to deal with the loud noise, the California compressor is a great unit.

I bought the 2HP unit 2 weeks ago for an indoor kitchen cabinet refinishing project. I purchased the 2HP unit for indoor painting using a HVLP gravity feed spray gun. The compressor is very quite and performed very well. It had no problem meeting the air volume requirements of the gun which were 4 SFCM at 40 PSI. After priming and painting 25 cabinet doors, I moved indoors to paint the interior cabinet cavities and exterior panels. Halfway through the second day the air hose that connects the air valve to the pressure switch blew out. The hoses on the unit are plastic, this particular hose was routed close to the cylinder head which melted through the hose. After replacing the plastic hose, I noticed a clanking sound coming from the cylinder head followed by a reduction is air pressure and the units ability to maintain the required airflow. I limped along in order to complete the job. Today I disassembled the cylinder heads to find the 4mil metal air intake valves were broken off and nicely chewed up inside the cylinders. A compressor that costs $400.00 should not have plastic supply hoses, and air intake valves that last less than 40 hours of run time. I have replaced the plastic supply lines with copper lines, and have made new air intake valve plates. I will be reassembling the compressor this afternoon and st ting another refinishing project. I’ll report back on well the machine performs this time around.

I would have to say that the reliability is much less than desired and I would not recommend using this for production work without first upgrading the supply lines and having ample replacement air intake valves.

If I did not know better these units look somewhat similar to the medical type air compressors made by Gast.
These may be some sort of Chinese clone redesigned for basic air compressor use.
After reading the above review about the poor design with coupler hoses, I really have to wonder how many corners did the company cut to make their productions costs.?
Thanks for the real world review with a serious QA test.